Entertainment

Sombr Covers Taylor Swift at Songwriters Hall of Fame Ceremony

As we say every year, the annual Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony is a combination of an awards show and a family reunion — an annual gathering of superstars virtually everyone recognizes, iconic behind-the-scenes songwriters that a few people recognize, and top executives from the music industry who hardly any normal person recognizes. And every non-pandemic year for the last half-century-plus, the ceremony has inducted several legendary, contemporary and up-and-coming talents — and often as not, the inductees say the honor means more to them than any other, because it’s recognition from their peers, many of whom are in the room.
However, when one of the inductees is the most popular musician in the entire world, much of that intimacy inevitably vanishes, and on this night, along with Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of Kiss, John Fogerty, Alanis Morissette, Raye, Kenny Loggins, and non-performing songwriters Walter Afanasieff, Terry Britten & Graham Lyle and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, one of those inductees was Taylor Swift. Thus, security was tight and the event did not allow for the usual socializing and table-hopping — and the press, as social media shows, was banished to the balconies.
As she usually is at such events, Swift was in the room for the entire ceremony, seated beside fiancé Travis Kelce and flanked by her mother, early songwriting collaborator Liz Rose, and Steven Spielberg (with wife Kate Capshaw), who would later give her induction speech after Sombr performed “Cardigan” and “Dear John” to her delighted reaction and effusive praise during her speech.
“I have to say thank you to Sombr for that perfect performance,” she said. “His writing is so exceptional that it makes me actually envious, and I love that feeling — he’s gonna be the top of my Spotify Wrapped this year guaranteed, it’s locked, it’s in the bag. A lot of my late night debates with my friends about the state of the music industry involve me saying very loudly, ‘Sombr is the future and he does it all on his own and he doesn’t need AI. The kids are fine.’ And so obviously, Shane is a very well-adjusted person and artist, and doesn’t need any of my advice at all.”
Throughout the night she whooped and rocked out in familiar fashion — so much that, as she took the stage at midnight, as the always-long ceremony entered its fifth hour (and combined with her highly publicized enthusiasm during the Knicks victory the night before), her voice was raspy. (Read her 21-minute speech here in full.)
Spielberg’s introduction was dynamic as well. “As a director, I am acutely aware of the power that music can have on audiences. And as much as I believe that the stories we tell as filmmakers have the potential to entertain and engage, there is something undeniable about how songs enrich our souls,” he said. “Music will always be the guiding force, whether it’s sung in our cars at the top of our lungs, or in houses of worship, or at football games, or on the streets of Minnesota.”
He went on to say that Swift, the youngest female ever to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, “has no fear when it comes to shattering records as a writer, singer, and storyteller, a singular artist, and a genuine phenomenon whose place in our culture rivals that of the composers of the American Songbook, Lennon McCartney of the ’60s and the singer-songwriters of the 1970s like Carole King and Stevie ‘Let’s Go Knicks,’” punning the Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter with the hometown NBA heroes — “and your namesake, James Taylor.”
Noting her long efforts to own her music, he said her “fearless determination to stand up for all artists’ rights is a reflection of her deep understanding of how best to use the meteoric fame that she has been navigating since she was just a teenager.”
After initially feeling honored by the invitation to induct her, Spielberg said, “About five minutes after I hung up, my elation faded slightly because, I mean, what could I possibly say about Taylor that has not already been said? Just thinking about how much true, false, and plain crazy stuff has been written about you boggles the mind. So just out of curiosity, I asked AI if you could tell me how many words have been written about Taylor Swift,” he said to laughter. “And you know what? It couldn’t tell me. Then I asked it, how many words have been written by Taylor Swift? And it couldn’t tell me that either. And I just thought, wow, she is such a force that the depth of her achievements defies AI!,” adding to cheers, “I should have known that something that starts with ‘artificial’ wouldn’t have a clue.”
He concluded, “Through her songs, she has taken billions of people by the hand and by the heart, and lights them with a message that is rooted in community and infused with hope and relatability. Through her songs, she makes us believe that we are in this together and together we can grow up, live, love, make mistakes, succeed, fail, and yet continue to believe in our own self-worth. Somehow, Taylor knows us all too well.
“I love making movies,” he cracked “but I don’t think I will ever fill stadiums of multi-generational fans who want to recite the dialogue from ‘Indiana Jones.’ So thank you, Taylor, for the gift of your stories and for insisting on being an authentic voice in a world where the line between real and fake is increasingly blurred. You are our mirror ball.”
The show began with R&B singer Tamar Braxton honoring Tricky Stewart with a lively performance of “Single Ladies.” During a brief induction speech, Stewart’s longtime friend and fellow Atlanta hitmaker Dallas Austin said, “He is a kind-hearted person, and to me, music is a reflection of the person who created it.” Another performance followed — this time Republic Recording artist Kylie Cantrall singing the Rihanna smash “Umbrella” — before Stewart’s long acceptance speech, in which he reeled off his long history of publishing deals and finished by announcing his newest, with BMG.
Next up was Britten and Lyle, honored with a jazzy cover of “What’s Love Got to Do With It?,” made famous by Tina Turner in 1984, and a more conventional one from Taylor Dayne on another Turner hit, “Hero.” Jane Seymour gave a warm induction speech, and the pair followed with brief comments of their own, noting that others who’d covered “What’s Love Got to Do With It” before Turner “didn’t have the legs” she did.
Accepting a second award from the Hall was John Fogerty, who was already an inductee but on this night was receiving the Johnny Mercer Awards, recognizing “a writer or writers already inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and judged by the Nominating Committee as having established a history of outstanding creative works.” Veteran rocker Steve Miller gave the induction speech, saying that “John Fogerty is Americana at its finest” and referencing his “unwavering fight for artists’ rights and his decades-long battle to regain the rights to his work,” referencing Fogerty’s long, and ultimately successful, battle with Fantasy Records and subsequent owners.
Fogerty charmed the crowd by taking the stage with an effusive “Hello all you wonderful songwriters!” although his speech went on for nearly half an hour, beginning with him as a three-year-old receiving a record as a gift from his mother (“Oh Susannah!” on one side and “Camptown Races” on the flip) and proceeding seemingly in real time throughout the rest of his 81 years. However, a high point came when he said that he’d finally gained control of his catalog because he’d “outlived all those sons of bitches!”
He then was joined onstage by two guitarists for not one but four songs: a brief “Oh Susannah” followed by his own hits “Proud Mary,” “Have You Ever Seen Rain?” and finally “The Old Man Down the Road,” which concluded with a long and fiery guitar duel. By the time he left the stage, Fogerty’s segment alone had lasted for more than 45 minutes and deflated the mood. However, eyebrows raised when, next up, Mariah Carey hitmaker Walter Afanaesieff was inducted by his friend, actor Jeremy Renner, praising him for creating “the soundtrack of our lives,” and a lovely version of “One Sweet Day” from Sheléa.
A jolt of energy hit the room as Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan entered the stage wearing dark eye makeup and clad in one of his now-characteristic long tunics — an incongruously serious getup in which to be singing Kiss’ classic “Rock and Roll All Night.” He was then joined by Goo Goo Dolls singer Johnny Rzaznik, and as the pair took the podium, Corgan said “We just lived a childhood dream!”
The pair paid tribute to the “demonic dynamic duo” of Stanley and Simmons and their half-century long partnership, before ceding the stage to Stanley, who said how humbled he was to be on the stage before explaining that his “partner of 57 years” had an unspecified family emergency and was currently at a hospital. He continued by saying that amid the “bombs and the bombast and all the things the band is known for, it’s nothing without a song,” and recalled his days as a young musician trying to hawk his songs at the legendary Brill Building in Manhattan and hoping one day to emulate his songwriting heroes there like Carole King, Doc Pomus, how she longed to hear Ellie Greenwich and others. Stanley, 74, added, “At this point in my life, I say I f you love me let me know — don’t save it for my obituary!”
The evening took an unusual turn as a violinist and cellist — SistaStrings — took the stage and were followed by Brandi Carlile bearing an acoustic guitar. The musicians then proceeded to peel off a fiery cover of Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited” that was the most musically innovative performance of the night.
During the induction speech, Carlile spoke of being a young gay woman in the Pacific Northwest, growing up amid the sound of “angry young white men” singing the grunge music that emanated from the region and how she “longed to hear a woman’s voice singing rock and roll — and it came from Ottawa, Canada.” She spoke effusively of Morissette’s “unusual cadence and unhinged precision,” and how her music is a “masterclass on knowing oneself, and challenge what it means to be a woman.”
Morissette, clad in a glittering gold dress, took the podium and said that “writing has always been a survivial strategy, an imperative. It helps me locate and find myself from outside-in, as opposed to inside-out.
“I love humans, but don’t get me wrong” — she laughed — “I hate us sometimes too.” Accompanied by two guitarists, she then played “Merry Go Round” and the 1995 hit that put her on the map, “You Oughta Know.”
Next up was Raye, who received the Hal David Starlight Award for rising young talent, but likely just as much for her fierce advocacy for songwriters, who, as everyone in the room knows all too well, are unfairly at the bottom of the streaming economy. She was inducted by none other than Chic cofounder and legendary producer, songwriter and guitarist Nile Rodgers, who has been chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame for some eight years. He said he would keep the introduction short — adding “Yo, John,” with a laugh to Fogerty — before ceding the stage to Raye.
She too said that although she is naturally verbose and “I’m sometimes irritating and annoying to some people” and would keep it short, but “we have an obligation to protect [songwriters] — it can’t just be rich people writing songs!” and then spoke briefly but emphatically of the need for songwriters to receive “points on the master” — meaning a percentage of the profit, which artists, labels, publishers and producers receive but songwriters inexplicably do not.
The pre-Taylor show concluded with Gavin DeGraw paying tribute to Kenny Loggins with a slow, soulful version of his 1972 hit “Danny’s Song,” an arrangement so imaginative that Loggins joked at the beginning of his speech “What song was that?” He too spoke at length about how music came into his childhood via his brother’s record collection, which he was forbidden to play but did anyway.
In a telling moment for the rebellious spirit of rock and roll and a tip for parents everywhere, he said, “If you want your kids to love music — forbid it!”

Entertainment

Blake Lively to Have Legal Fees Paid for by Justin Baldoni, Wayfarer

Blake Lively will have her legal fees paid by Justin Baldoni but isn’t entitled to damages for harm caused by his defamation claims, a court found Friday.
Under the settlement reached last month, Baldoni waived his right to appeal the court’s order last year dismissing his $400 million lawsuit against Lively. The deal didn’t include monetary compensation but left open the door for the actress to recover her legal costs and pursue damages under a California law intended to shield sexual harassment victims from retaliatory defamation claims.
That law, the court said, “does not create an end run around the entire set of carefully crafted federal procedural rules designed to protect the rights of the parties.”
“It instead establishes a narrow exception to the usual litigation process for a specific and limited kind of relief,” wrote U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in the ruling. “Compensatory and punitive damages do not fall within that exception.”
The order decides the last legal issue in the case after Lively and Baldoni reached an 11th-hour settlement to avert a headline-splashing trial over alleged sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us. Now, the court will asses how much in legal fees she should be paid, with her lawyers submitting a breakdown of their hourly rates and how long they worked on the case.
The bill could be sky-high considering the pedigree of lawyers Lively had on her legal team, led by heavyweight litigators Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson. In less than two years of litigation, there were nearly 1500 entries on the docket as a result of extensive motions practice.
“Today’s ruling makes it clear that Ms. Lively brought her claims in good faith, that there was no evidence she acted with malice, and that she is the prevailing defendant” under the California law she asserted, they said in a statement.
The lawyers added that Lively is gratified to show how the statute creates “a path for survivors to hold accountable those who weaponize online attacks and retaliatory lawsuits to intimidate and silence survivors.”
Under that law, the actress moved for attorneys’ fees, plus treble and punitive damages, for harm caused by Baldoni’s defamation claims. The statute, which went into effect in 2024, is intended to shield sexual harassment and assault victims when they report misconduct as long as they had a reasonable basis for their claims.
While the court denied damages in this case, it left open the possibility for Lively to seek additional damages through another lawsuit or counterclaim against Baldoni or Wayfarer, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read Lively’s full statement below:

Entertainment

Opera Company Sues to Collect $17 Million From the Kennedy Center

The Washington National Opera, which recently severed its longstanding relationship with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, has filed a lawsuit that demands more than $17 million from the center that the opera company estimates it is owed.
The suit, filed Thursday, says that since the opera company struck out on its own this year, Kennedy Center officials have refused to release the money, which the court papers say includes endowment funds, other donations and income that was collected for the company’s benefit.
“W.N.O. reluctantly files this case to preserve its future and to protect its donors and artists,” lawyers for the opera said in court papers, which identify the funds as donor gifts received over years that are “critical” to its operations.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the center, said that the relationship with the opera company “financially burdened” the center for more than a decade. The statement noted that taking into account the company’s endowment, an external accounting firm had calculated that the company had “accumulated a $72 million deficit to the center” between 2011 and 2026, the years it was an affiliate of the institution.
“The center has acted transparently and in the best interests of the public throughout this process,” Ms. Daravi said. “This lawsuit is meritless, and we plan to pursue a countersuit to defend the institution.”
The opera left the center in January, nearly a year after President Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center led to an exodus of audiences, artists and donors. Officials at the center said then that they had decided to part ways with the opera, which had played there since 1971, “due to a financially challenging relationship.”
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Entertainment

Inside Taylor Swift’s wild New York night out after Knicks historic win

Taylor Swift took the stage at the Songwriters Hall of Fame on Thursday in NYC still hoarse from cheering on the Knicks at MSG the night before.
“The quality of my speaking voice is the product of two things that I am not sorry for… One is that I was lucky enough to go to a Knicks game last night,” the “Shake It Off” icon said croakily while explaining her raspy tone after accepting an award from presenter Steven Spielberg, whose latest film was about to open in a few hours.
“I screamed for 100% of it,” she said of the Knicks game. “And then I got home and was like, ‘I gotta stop screaming’… And then I got to witness the amazing performances I saw tonight. I just never stopped screaming, and so this is what you get.”
Swift did not mention that she’d also arrived at Zero Bond earlier that morning at about 1a.m. flanked by Este and Alana Haim in a T-shirt that read “Stevie Knicks.” The pop star trio were seen exiting at about 3a.m.
Performers at the Songwriters gala included the contempo crooner Sombr, who did a rendition of Swift’s 2020 classic, “Cardigan” and her ballad, “Dear John.” (Sombr had also been out at Zero Bond the night before.)
Spielberg said that after accepting the gig as Swift’s presenter for the show, he instantly fretted because, “What could I possibly say about Taylor Swift that has not already been said? Just thinking about how much true, false and just plain crazy stuff has been written about you boggles the mind!”
So the “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” filmmaker asked AI, ironically, if it could tell him how many words have been written about Swift, and also how many words Swift has written. Both queries apparently stumped the bot. “She is such a force that the depths of her achievements defy AI,” the “Disclosure Day” director said.
Also honored at the Songwriters Hall of Fame gala were Alanis Morissette, Kenny Loggins, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, Kiss rockers Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Walter Afanasieff and Terry Britten and Graham Lyle.

Entertainment

Spielberg returns to familiar alien territory : NPR

Earlier this year, former President Obama made waves in an interview when he said that he believed aliens were real, though he hadn’t seen any evidence of them during his time in office. President Trump accused Obama of revealing “classified information,” but then said that he would direct government agencies to release a number of images showing alien and extraterrestrial activity. The Pentagon rolled out those photos last month, but they were largely deemed fuzzy and inconclusive.
All this might sound like free publicity for Steven Spielberg’s new thriller, Disclosure Day, which is about a massive U.S. conspiracy to hide the fact that aliens have been visiting Earth for decades. If anything, though, the movie’s pleasures feel more retro than timely. It harks back to Spielberg’s greatest alien-themed hits, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and War of the Worlds. But it also feels like a throwback to the ’90s and early 2000s — the era of conspiracy-minded sci-fi series like The X-Files and M. Night Shyamalan’s eerie crop-circle thriller, Signs.
Disclosure Day stars Josh O’Connor as Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity expert who decides to blow the whistle on his employer, Wardex. That’s a powerful agency, operating outside the boundaries of the government, that, for decades, has suppressed evidence of alien visits to Earth. Daniel has stolen video footage of these creatures, and he feels duty-bound to disclose it to the public — and to expose the sinister Wardex for having captured, detained and even tortured its share of aliens.
Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Mo., something strange happens when a TV meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild, played by Emily Blunt, tries to deliver her morning weather report. She freezes up on the air and begins making strange, guttural clicking noises, speaking what appears to be a kind of alien language. Around this time, Margaret also finds that she can read the minds of the people around her — a gift that comes in handy once she, too, goes on the run, with Wardex agents in pursuit.
Although Margaret and Daniel don’t know each other, they share a mysterious connection. Noah Scanlon, the head of Wardex, played by an unusually terrifying Colin Firth, is determined to stop them before they can make contact.
One of Scanlon’s deadliest weapons is a form of mind-control technology that he uses to try to get Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane, played by a very good Eve Hewson, to betray him. Whatever aliens might be capable of doing to us, the movie suggests, we have far more to fear from some of our fellow humans.
The mind-control bit is one of the movie’s cleverest sequences; a scene in which Margaret stages an almost Houdini-level escape is another. At 79, Spielberg is still the nimble filmmaker who delights in treating cinema as a magic trick. He’s also as skilled with actors as ever. Firth injects a palpable sense of anguish into the role of the movie’s big villain, and O’Connor brings an Everyman likability to his truth-telling tech whiz. But the most dazzlingly inventive work comes from Blunt.
Often a tough, sardonic screen presence, as in The Devil Wears Prada 2, Blunt gets to flex her proven action and comedy muscles in a more earnest emotional register. Like Richard Dreyfuss’ obsessed alien seeker in Close Encounters, Margaret is the kind of madly eccentric character Spielberg instinctively gravitates toward — someone who has little idea where she’s headed, but is convinced, rightly, that the truth really is out there.
There are other memorable characters, too. Colman Domingo gives a warm turn as a fellow whistleblower, who steers the operation from afar. And Elizabeth Marvel delivers a fine performance as a Catholic nun who, in one of the film’s more thoughtful asides, claims that the existence of aliens doesn’t threaten her belief in God. If anything, she says, it affirms that God, like the universe he created, is far bigger and more complex than humans like to acknowledge.
That’s a profoundly beautiful idea, though I wish Disclosure Day itself were a more complex movie. Spielberg’s storytelling is often described as overly sentimental, which isn’t always fair; his previous work, the semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, was one of the most genuinely moving films of his career.
But sentimentality does ultimately overwhelm Disclosure Day, especially in the big finale, when the movie strains to bring its characters and indeed all of humanity together. Having shown us some of the terrible things powerful people are capable of, Spielberg makes a third-act lurch toward catharsis, as though desperate to suggest we aren’t beyond redemption as a species. Like the existence of alien life, our essential goodness is easy enough to believe in, but a lot harder to prove.

Entertainment

8 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Olivia Rodrigo, Kelsey Lu, and More

With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new drops available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Olivia Rodrigo, Kelsey Lu, YHWH Nailgun, Horse Lords, and more. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Olivia Rodrigo: You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love [Geffen]
Olivia Rodrigo made a name for herself as the pop star embracing ballads and bubblegrunge influences in equal doses. You Seem Pretty Sad For a Girl So in Love, her third album, proves she’s much more than that. The follow-up to 2024’s Guts is brash and bold, flinging heartbreak around until it becomes an art medium set to ’80s new wave, string-swollen hooks, and aughts Britpop. While “Drop Dead” and “The Cure” set the album’s tone, it’s the duet “What’s Wrong With Me” with Robert Smith of the Cure that gives it an extra jolt. After debuting it live with Rodrigo at Primavera, Smith gushed about how much he admires her: “She is genuinely fantastic as a songwriter and as a singer and performer.”
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Kelsey Lu: So Help Me God [Dirty Hit]
Although multi-hyphenate Kelsey Lu might seem adept at handling her music with meticulous care, her latest record, So Help Me God, is an ode to not having everything together. “This isn’t really a healing album,” the Los Angeles-based singer and cellist said in a statement. “It’s more of a reckoning. It’s about facing the parts of myself I tried to move past, and realising they were still shaping everything.” Enlisting Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman as co-producers and tapping Sampha, Kamasi Washington, and Kim Gordon for features, Lu burrows into the darkest corners and sharpest edges of her grief, emerging with a record that charts devotion and devastation through layers of new wave pop, orchestral R&B, and lush electronic. This is the sound of discovering who you are, idiosyncrasies and all.
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YHWH Nailgun: Magazine [4AD]
The members of YHWH Nailgun move as one piece. That seems like it would be standard for a band, especially one intricately stitching yelps, rolls, and flyaways as tightly as the New York experimental rockers do. But listening to Magazine—their new 10-track, 11-minute album—that artful density becomes singular, swaying as much as whipping between its frantic ideas. While their debut 45 Pounds stemmed from electrified math rock, Magazine blooms with expansive jazz and complex forms that feel like a daydream.
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Horse Lords: Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! [Rvng Intl.]
Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive!, a typically knotty follow-up to Horse Lords’ 2022 LP Comradely Objects, continues the Baltimore-founded quartet’s quest to meld contrasting milieus—the minimalist and maximalist, childlike and intellectualized, earthy and science-fictional—into music that blends improv rock aesthetics with contemporary classical structure. The closer and title track serve as a belated mission statement, at once tonally busy and capaciously arranged, as if to make the frequency spectrum itself a character in the songs. More than formal tinkering, it plays like a heartfelt project to unseat us from complacent pessimism and reawaken a psychedelic curiosity about the future.
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Ruth Garbus: Profound [Orindal]
Ruth Garbus begins Profound “as relaxed as a woman can be when she’s filled with blood,” as she sings on “I Think I’m Ready Now,” melodies writhing from the dusty glow of her lo-fi, keys-and-guitar backdrop. The Vermont singer-songwriter’s follow-up to 2023’s Alive People spends much of its runtime tweezing such poetic gems out of complex, knotty harmonies that can intensify like haunted orbs or burst like piñatas. Garbus writes with an almost violent clarity—as well as a happy, playful sensibility she attributes to starting medication for depression and anxiety—as she locks in with bandmates Nick Bisceglia and Elie McAfee-Hahn to interrogate the modern condition.
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Wiki: Ancient History [Wikset Enterprise]
When Wiki wrapped production on his new album Ancient History, the New York rapper couldn’t have known just how electric a moment in the city’s history it would be born into. But longtime Knicks fans and bandwagoners alike will appreciate this record’s dedication to the sounds of his hometown—more specifically, its parks system, a place that has brought him refuge, community, and inspiration over the years. Fellow New Yorkers Your Old Droog, duendita, and Salimata feature, and jazzy, often-introspective production from MIKE and Navy Blue builds out Wiki’s solo universe. By the end, it really does feel like New York or nowhere.
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Anysia Kym & Tony Seltzer: Purity (Flips) [10K]
New Yorkers Anysia Kym and Tony Seltzer make for a dynamic duo., but they both know a bigger team can create magic. On Purity (Flips), they curate a killer lineup of producers spread far across their taste profiles, including Traxman, Loraine James, Popstar Benny, Bored Lord, Umru, Black Noi$e, and AceMo. 454 and Vayda also hop on for features, and MIKE represents for the home team with a remix credited to his alias DJ Blackpower. It’s a testament to not just Kym and Seltzer’s flexible sound, but their formidable profile in the underground.
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CFCF: L.U.V. [CFCF]
CFCF, the project of Montreal club lynchpin Mike Silver, returns with its first album in five years and first since Silver moved to Los Angeles. L.U.V. barrels headlong into a world that straddles sleazy techno and post-SOPHIE dance-pop, full of neon-balloon textures, deadpan mantras, and synth hooks blurted out like smoking-area confessions. As much as it consolidates the advances of modern club pop—see the Cecile Believe-assisted “Bad Song” or the four-on-the-floor, dance-pad beat of “Babes”—Silver resists pure bubblegum cynicism with counterintuitive melodic arcs that draw you ever deeper into the album’s seemingly flat, shining surfaces.
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